# firecracker-microvm/firecracker

Secure and fast microVMs for serverless computing.

Repository: https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/firecracker
Homepage: http://firecracker-microvm.io
Language: Rust
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: virtual-machine, sandbox, virtualization, rust, containers, minimalist, open-source, serverless, oversubscription
Last push: 2026-08-26T17:44:55+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 92/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 79, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3240, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 62, "gap_med": 31.5, "n_releases_24m": 19}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 36300, forks 2583 (observed 2026-08-28T04:12:01.016067+00:00)

## What it is
Firecracker is an open-source virtual machine monitor (VMM) that uses Linux KVM to create and manage lightweight microVMs for secure multi-tenant workloads. Developed at AWS to power Lambda and Fargate, it combines VM-level isolation with container-like speed and density.

## Use cases
- run serverless functions in isolated microVMs
- sandbox untrusted code with VM-level isolation
- build a multi-tenant container runtime like Kata Containers
- launch thousands of lightweight VMs per host for high density
- securely isolate FaaS workloads on bare metal
- spin up fast-booting VMs for CI or ephemeral compute

## When to choose
- you need strong hardware-virtualization isolation with sub-125ms boot times
- you run multi-tenant or untrusted workloads and need a minimal attack surface
- you want container-like density with VM-grade security on Linux/KVM hosts
- you are building your own serverless or FaaS platform

## When to avoid
- you need full-featured VMs with many emulated devices or GPU passthrough
- your host does not run Linux with KVM support
- you just need simple process-level sandboxing without VM isolation
- you need a managed solution and cannot operate infrastructure

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: stable
- function: container-runtime, security, serverless
- domain: cloud-computing, security, self-hosted
- platform: rust, cli, self-hosted
- tags: microvm, vmm, kvm, virtualization, serverless, sandboxing, aws-lambda, multi-tenant, sandbox, devops, containers, linux

## Member repositories
- firecracker-microvm/firecracker (main) score 92

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:01.016067+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:26:42.731976+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker (fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:01.016067+00:00, sha b1efa46c7665)
  - homepage: http://firecracker-microvm.io (fetched 2026-08-29T07:47:36.371130+00:00, sha 7b0ff28706d4)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.